create a Powerful Personal Narrative For Your Courage
Overlay The Story of Heroism on Your Life
“Heroism is ever available, and in fact it is through ordinary experiences that the ordinary person can become extraordinary.”
—George Sheehan
Tell Me a Heroic Story
How often do children ask their parents, “Will you tell me a story?” Even as children we instinctively know the power of storytelling. Humans are genetically programmed to respond to stories. Stories provide us with a sensory mechanism to comprehend and make meaning out of the complexity of information swirling around and inside of us. As Annette Simmons, author of The Story Factor points out, “Story is the DNA of all meaning – nothing is important but for the story you tell yourself about it.”
The heroic journey is a particularly powerful story of courage and transformation. Throughout history and across world mythologies, stories of heroes and heroines abound. The details of these stories may vary from culture to culture, but the need for stories of heroism is common to all people and all times. This archetypal nature of heroism may be because everyone’s life is a mythological heroic journey.
In his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell contended that there is a “universal face” to heroism. We all must find within ourselves the heroic character to face what life has to offer. There is an inner drive within each of us to leave the safety of our childhood, move beyond the inner turmoil of adolescence, deal with the responsibility of adulthood, and leave our mark on society.
In our personal lives, it is how effectively we deal with challenges that determines whether we simply exist and just get by or lead a heroic life. So many of us today, however, are detached from this universal story of heroism. We may live vicariously through fantasy movies or the real-life heroic story of others. But, we may not know how to meaningfully apply it to our own life. This detachment may be why so many of us feel a sense of internal fragmentation, disconnection, anxiety, anger and depression.
Experiencing your life as a heroic journey helps you see that your past does not have to define your future. Stepping onto your heroic path is choosing to courageously act despite your fears, so you can take the challenging, but ultimately rewarding and exhilarating adventure into transformation and personal growth.
Experience Your Heroic Narrative as a Meaning-Making Vessel for Your Life
“We are meaning-seeking creatures. Dogs, as far as we know, do not agoni[z]e about the canine condition, worry about the plight of dogs in other parts of the world, or try to see their lives from a different perspective. But human beings fall easily into despair, and from the very beginning we invented stories that enabled us to place our lives in a larger setting, that revealed an underlying pattern, and gave us a sense that, against all the depressing and chaotic evidence to the contrary, life had meaning and value.”
―Karen Armstrong
Author of a Short History of Myth
For better or worse, the stories we tell ourselves about the meaning of our experiences shape how we feel about life’s challenges. This is true whether those stories are about who we are, how we relate to others or our understandings about the world. Consciously or unconsciously, we assign each experience fragment a meaning based on the culture in which we live, our past conditioning, belief systems, traumas, joys, triumphs, deep loves and losses, and defense mechanisms built throughout a lifetime to shield ourselves from pain.
Once we commit to live our life as an unfolding heroic narrative of courage and transformation, we enter a sacred space within ourselves. While others may be dependent on their outside environment or other people to set the context in which they live, we experience life differently. Even though we may not have control over outside circumstances, from a heroic perspective, we have the power to choose the meaning we assign to any experience. We understand that no experience is extraneous. Each has the potential to draw us meaningfully toward the center of ourselves, where we feel most courageous, relaxed, at peace and authentically at home with who we are.
To get to that place, though, will often require a heroic effort to overcome our fear or inertia to remain within our comfort zone. We may need to honestly examine how we relate to ourselves or others that limits our ability to grow and mature. We may need to re-examine past traumas in terms of how we can transmute our suffering, so we can experience more lightness, joy and compassion for ourselves and/or others. We may need to adopt a growing mindset to more clearly see the world through eyes of creativity, expansiveness and opportunity.
From inside your heroic narrative, challenges take on a different meaning. We see them as story elements in our evolving story of heroism. Every experience strengthens our character, courage, resolve and resilience. This indelible memory tool helps us place the real-life situations we encounter into the larger context of transformation, which brings a more evolved meaning to our experiences. Experience by experience our challenges help us embody the characteristics of genuine heroism.
With the “transformational mindset” of heroism it becomes easier to courageously face life’s challenges with heart and tenacity, knowing it will ultimately help us live life more fully and authentically. It is from this more evolved place within that we can contribute to the world from the best version of ourselves. We know from personal experience that real heroism is achieved by gaining wisdom from every situation and person encountered, whether in in our relationships, work, leadership or elsewhere in our lives.
LET YOUR HEROIC HEART LIGHT THE WAY
To embark on our heroic journey, not only do we need to undertake it with courage, but also with heart. It is important to let our life beat to our heart-center, so we can compassionately connect to all that is, internally and externally.
It takes self-compassion to uncover the hidden gems at the center of ourselves, which have been there all along buried beneath our pain, fear and defensiveness. When we operate from this powerful heart-center, we naturally light the way to bring forth our personal wisdom, inner truth, empathy for others and desire to serve the world as only we uniquely we can do!
PERSONALIZED MENTORING
While you have a unique heroic path to follow in life, you don’t have to face your personal challenges alone. We are here to help you master those challenges through Life Guidance Mentoring and Leadership Development Mentoring.
Let us know if we can further support you on your personal or professional journey!